There was no worthy reply, just apprehension as Do?a Ursulina’s shoulders shook as if the pillar keeping her together all these years was finally crumbling. “How did I know this sacrifice would be true? That Rahmagut would listen and give me exactly what I asked of him? Because I helped Feleva drag nine women into this tomb, all kicking and biting and fighting, when we were just your age. She slit their necks and spilled their blood to invoke Rahmagut. And he replied. He thanked her for the weakening of his seal, and he granted her exactly what she asked for in the form of all that iridio: wealth, fame, power. She was ambitious, yes, but it all fell in her lap, thanks to my help.”
“Feleva?” Reina breathed.
Her expression brought Do?a Ursulina great amusement. “We grew up together, did you know?” She ran a hand along the dusty smooth stone railing of the bridge. “We were friends—rivals—lovers. We were light and darkness; beauty and strength; the pioneering conqueresses of our generation.” The glow in her eyes was unmissable. A blue afterimage of power brimming for an outlet. “She promised it would be ours—all of it. We were going to be together. We were going to have children.”
Reina almost uttered her father’s name, but she needn’t. Do?a Ursulina saw the intention in her eyes and nodded.
“Enrique and Juan Vicente, half brothers. But she forbade me from speaking the truth. She inscribed her name in the history books as the sole discoverer of the iridio. And I let her. I loved her.” Her voice broke, and Reina understood the pure, distilled indignation. The scorn of never being good enough. “And that was my folly, believing it wouldn’t have an impact on the way people treated me. Because of our blood, she always saw us differently, and she raised her despicable valco son to believe he was the sole heir of her fortune. Enrique never treated your father as equal. He never gave us our due. Not even after the revolution ousted Segol’s government. He didn’t even acknowledge how we’d helped him build a healthy distribution of iridio all over Venazia and Fedria, hooking every geomancer on its power. The ?guilas grew richer, and Juan Vicente was so fed up that he left.” She took a deep breath, her curling palm raised as she summoned that terrible void magic.
Reina’s grip on the blade—it weakened. She stared at her feet as her chest wrung itself into knots. “So Celeste and I…？” she muttered.
“You share human blood.”
“Did she know?”
Do?a Ursulina shook her head. “Enrique never took the word brother for its literal meaning. And Feleva wasn’t happy with how it came to be. But that is not a tale I owe you.” She could have spat the answer, and it wouldn’t have made a difference. “And all this time, Enrique has had the nerve to see me as his subordinate, the fool. My power goes beyond Feleva’s, for I am alive, and she is not. I evolved and perfected. Now, tell me, do you ever hear the Duvianos name in the tales and histories of the revolution? Do you ever hear my name mentioned with the same regard as Feleva’s? No, you hear it spat out, calling me a witch of void magic while they glorify her as a heroine for those antlers and the iridio Rahmagut granted her when she was a killer all along!” She pressed a palm to her chest, mocking. “So I’m the one supposed to be deterred by arbitrary lines? I don’t think so.”
She sheathed her knife and dug her hands into Eva’s barrier, grappling, her gloves tearing and taking flesh and blood along with them. “I waited all these years for the return of Rahmagut’s Claw. Now it’s my turn to claim the reward. I shall become a witch of the Void. I shall unseal Rahmagut and smite Enrique for all his transgressions when the time comes. His daughter becoming a Dama del Vacío? It’s nothing more than a joke from the gods.”
With a howl, Do?a Ursulina tugged the barrier’s framework, her body flaring black and blue as she pulled Eva’s litio barrier apart. The indomitable energy around Do?a Ursulina became a prism of violent blues, swirling like a black plume. The stench of decay filled the chamber as the barrier opened. It was like Reina was staring death in the eyes.
“I don’t care how much you think you deserve this. You won’t kill Maior,” Reina said. Otherwise she was going to lose her nerve.
Having disintegrated the barrier, Do?a Ursulina extended a hand as a gust eddied around it.
The bite of her magic infected the air. Reina almost recoiled. She was back in ?guila Manor, tense and powerless, Do?a Ursulina’s influence threatening her for obedience. It wrapped around her transplant heart, squeezing, to command her.
“You’re going to stop me?” Do?a Ursulina took in the length of Reina, all cuts and bruises and torn clothes. “You? The creature I groomed to serve me?” Do?a Ursulina snarled, corrupted and beastly. The spells of her beauty and youth rippled and faltered, for the briefest seconds revealing a wrinkled woman in her sixth decade, with a face marred by evil magic. As quickly as it wavered, the glamour snapped back into place.
“I don’t belong to you!” Reina yelled back, fighting, her limbs becoming unresponsive and catatonic.
“We shall see about that,” Do?a Ursulina said, squeezing the space between them, constricting the organ she’d fabricated and replaced in Reina’s chest.
Reina screamed. Her lungs compressed; the air left her as if a boulder were crushing her against the floor. Her vision went blank. Her grip on the blade was loosening upon Do?a Ursulina’s command. Her body betrayed her.
The agony was too much. Reina closed her eyes, drowning.
Faintly, her grandmother’s laughter echoed, worlds away. Then Reina lost grip on her life.
A breeze enveloped her. The relieving, warming comfort of shade during an all-too-sunny day. Reina stared down at her hands, their calluses and scars; they were obedient and wholly hers. She pressed a palm to her chest on instinct, feeling for her heart, finding the ragged texture beneath her shirt. She was still her, standing on a jungle path she recognized immediately, for it was one she took almost every night.
Reina followed it, diving into the jungle’s innards, seeking the tomb’s entrance. She needed to get back. She was a moribund nozariel, but if she had an ounce of life left, she was going to spend it saving Maior and Eva.
She knew her grandmother thought she had won. But Reina wasn’t ready to give up just yet.
The path went on endlessly. Reina ran so much her bangs and shirt were drenched in sweat when she reached the lagoon.
There was no gaping cave flanking the crystalline waters. Just a person sitting on a boulder with their back to her. A lean frame and a high ponytail of black hair like silk.
Celeste.
Reina’s heart fluttered. She placed a hand on her shoulder, rousing her.
As the person turned, Reina realized she’d been wrong. They were simultaneously Celeste, and Do?a Laurel, and Maior, and even her father, Juan Vicente, with his dark brown skin and black eddies for hair. The person was also a bald man in billowing robes, a golden blade on his lap.
Neither and all, at once.
They turned around and handed Reina the blade as gold as the sunlight filtering through the canopy. It was an offering like the food she used to leave under the sun before she rejected Ches from her life.
Laughter bubbled out of her. She was a fool. She had never been Rahmagut’s agent. She should have known this from the moment the blade became hers.